


Isn't This Where You Confess Your Undying Love For Me?

by pumatatsumi



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Clint Barton, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Being Tony, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4026205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumatatsumi/pseuds/pumatatsumi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark likes taking the hit, no, that came out wrong. Tony has just happened to have developed a conditioned-reflex to shield Steve from any threat sent his way, you know, because he can. Steve, in returns, take care of Tony off the field since Tony has the sense of responsibility of a six-year-old. Things progressed and somehow the group became a family Tony didn't know he need.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isn't This Where You Confess Your Undying Love For Me?

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the first fiction I've ever written and gained enough courage to post. I am sorry in advance if there's any OOC-ness. The fic takes place somewhere after Iron Man 3 and before Cap 2 so I didn't include Wanda or Pietro or Vision and the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D or it's just an AU, bare with me, I don't know. It's summer and in two weeks I have to go to cram school and probably no one is going to read this but, I don't know, have fun!

People often say that life is short, which Tony finds very amusing because life is undeniably the longest thing one individual can possibly experience in their lifetime. But, well, chances are they're talking about the lives of others, their loved ones; in which case, though, the statement stands. Yeah, life is short, human being is precious, but doesn't the mortality of it make ride a whole lot more thrilling? Sometimes.

.

It started with a couple of hits from some faceless evil alien minion, it was harmless, really. He was just happened to fly by when the thing was sneeking up on Cap and honestly, if his suit of armor cannot take a shitty punch from an ugly unknown alien goon unfazed, Tony would be deeply insulted, he would resign as Iron Man and sell all of his suits and donate them to charity and open a Belgian waffle stand, no jokes, he's practically one sixteenth Belgian. And besides, teammates have got each other's back, that's how it is, isn't it?

A couple of hits soon turns into knives, arrows and bullets, he didn't know there were this much of a variety of weapon thrown at them, at Steve, on a weekly basis. All in all, it's fine, really, the suit is bullet-proof, hell, it's missile-proof; knives and arrows are barely a scratch, maybe except those high-tech arrows and custom knives custom made for Clint and Natasha but hey, Tony is seventy-percent sure those won't be directed at him, not on the field, that is, close enough. He's fine, Cap's fine, everybody is happy.

Or not.

The end of a battle somehow in this godforsaken society does NOT mean food-home-shower-bed, the end of a battle somehow means debriefing, which is immensely pointless since the WHOLE thing was captured in high-defenition on national TV. But somehow, after some Fury-slash-Coulson dark magic mojo, Tony still finds himself in the debrief room, making a mental note to blow this room to pieces later when he has the chance, and, well, debriefing. He spent the first fifteen minutes brainstorming why Fury required the presence of ALL of them for this type of work since it's basically Steve doing sixty-percent of the talking and Natasha doing the remaining forty. The remaining hour and a half was well-spent on Tony plotting his not-so-evil plan and how to minimize the damage if he was really to blowup this room someday.

One advanced non-lethal restricted destruction missile designed in his head later, Tony saw Coulson closing the file in front of him and that is his cue to freedom. As Tony dragged his exhauted self to the hangar where his suit fits snugly in a special room custom-made for itself, not that he envies it whatsoever; he found an irregularity, Steve was waiting for him, and not the good kind of waiting either, surprisingly enough. Captain America had his arms folded across his chest and a stern look on his face, this means someone is in trouble; considering the man himself was standing in the hangar, in front of the suit chamber, his only escape pod, Tony took a wild guess that he must be the lucky one.

"Look, whatever it is you think I did, I didn't do it. I've been good this week, scout's honor. There's been nothing but bad guys blown up, I appeared fully clothed and sober on television and for once, Pepper is happy, you can't tell me otherwise." He said, rambling now, looking for an opening on the super soldier wall in front of him, considering the success probability if he jumped out of the hellicarrier right then and send JARVIS with the suit after him.

Iron Man and Captain America hasn't exactly been best of pals. They got off on the wrong foot, there's no argue with that; and since then, Tony has been slowly building up a wall around him with sarcasm and workloads. Don't get him wrong, he likes the Avengers, being in a team turns out alright, it's nice to have someone other than JARVIS to back him up from time to time; just that he doesn't want to be too emotionally invested, knowing someday it would undoubtedly come back and bite him, hard. Been there done that, not a fan. So, whereas the team practically lives in his tower, his property, he's never really been with them collectively. Tony spends most of his time in the workshop, he basically lives there now that he's installed a coffee machine and drudgingly taught Dummy how to make a cup without poisoning him; occasionally he crawls up to the kitchen to steal some food before retreating back to his sometimes-radioactive cocoon, allowing no access to anyone except Pepper and Rhoney, he likes things this way. And since Tony's an awesome host, he has JARVIS mornitor the team and ensure that they have everything they need in their respective quarters; gym equipment and sparring targets specifically designed to withstand each of their strengths and exploit their weaknesses, recreation room provided with the human history of entertainment and he's pretty sure the last thing they want is Tony's incomprehensible tech-talk. He's not a team player, it's written in his profile. Things were better this way, no one’s emotional stability was at risk.

Lost in his train of thought, Tony didn't quite catch what was coming from Steve.

"What?" He said, dumbly, that was rare.

Steve signed, appeared irritated, apparently Tony has been zoned out for a while.

"I asked what was up with you lately. I want an explanation."

"Er, I'm sorry but, what again? What's up with me?" Tony asked, confused now, that was also rare, somewhat.

"Yes, you... with the whole throwing yourself in the line of fire for me." Steve provided, his stoic expression long gone, substituted by mild frustration, Tony has gift at doing that to people.

"Ah, that. It's no biggie, Cap." Tony waved it off.

Steve huffed out a breath. "No biggie? Tony, you threw yourself in front of a grenade earlier today-

"Fully awared that my suit can take the damage. Can you, Cap? I know you're a super soldier, but even you can't take a grenade to the stomach and walk it off. I can take it, the suit can take it, nobody's hurt, how about that?"

Steve had a full-on frustrated look in his wide blue eyes now and Tony resented that. He hates it when people look at him with a pained expression on their face, like he's everything wrong with the world; not that he denies it, he just doesn't want to acknowledge it.

"Look, Cap. I know that you probably won't approve of my actions on the field or any of my actions at all but believe it or not, I have my own reason to make such decisions. Besides, as I told you, my suit can take the damage, if the Mark 43 can't take a grenade unfazed I would bench it for the rest of its life expectancy and the world would have a pretty sweet waffle stand.” Steve gave him a confused look, whatever. “I'm serious, Cap. I won't die taking a bullet for you, that is not my downfall, Cap. My death will be coffee poisoning and the culprit is Dummy, I know, I can see it coming. So if Captain Worrypants can just," he pat the guy's impeccable shoulders for good measures and with a flick of his fingers, the suit parts came flying and reassembled on his body, “quit stalling me because if I spend another second on this goddamn ship I swear to God will blow something up, and my track record this week has been pretty clean uptill now." He said before flicking on the visor. "If you want to continue this pointless conversation and I'm not even sure why you would, meet me in the workshop."

And with that, Tony went flying.

.

The thing is, when Tony said he would meet Steve in the workshop, he didn't really mean he would meet Steve in the workshop; he was just being polite. Maybe the idea of him being polite could be so baffling that Steve actually think that he meant meeting in the workshop, but he didn't. The workshop is, as contradictory as it may sound, his safety cocoon, the only place on Earth where he can take off every single pieces of armor he build around him without looking behind his back and just be by himself, surrounded by his tech and his bots and JARVIS soothing voice and just safe. So as he woke up from what some would call a pass-out, Tony briefly saw Steve's familiar figure hovering behind the glass door of his workshop and decided to ignore it altogether because he has a Mark 43 to fix to J's battle-ready standard, and that's pretty strict.

"How long have I been out, J?" Tony rubbed his face, everything felt like he just took a hammer to the guts. He hated out-of-schedule naps.

"Four hours and forty seven minutes, Sir."

"That seems decent. Okay, nap time's over, wake up boys." He snaps his fingers and points at the coffee machine, "Dummy, you know the drill, I want a cup, plain coffee, no sugar and absolutely no engine oil, you heard that? I don’t care if it’s your most favorite thing in the world, it’s just not humanly digestible." He leaned back on his bench and watched amused as the bot rolled up to the coffee station in a disappointed manners as if someone just snatched away his toy. "J, show me the damage of the Mark 43."

"The suit's integrity remains at sixty-seven percent when you docked it, Sir. The chestplate area took most of the hit, dysfunction at the hip joint and the hand repulsors, other minor damages have been fixed since the event of your return. Integrity now at eighty-one percent."

He's always loved Jarvis, "Thanks buddy, now let's get to the heavy duty work. Dummy, coffee." Tony made grabby fingers as the bot rolled from the coffee station to his workbench, spilling one-third of the drink in the process. Whatever, Tony needed caffeine before he could even think straight, two-third or one-third won't make a difference. "Dummy, I now officially assign you the task of providing me with coffee every two hours, you got that? I don't care if you run out of cups just ask JARVIS to order more. And I will also have him mornitor you so you'd better not poison me with something suspicious, yeah? We're good?" The bot chirps and nods clunkily with his metal claw. "Fist bump buddy." The claw closed to what quite resembled a human fist and nudged lightly at Tony's waiting fist and this is exactly why he loves his workshop.

"Sir, may I please inform you that Captain Rogers has been standing outside the workshop for two hours and thirty six minutes now and he has tried to access the workshop with the total of fifty two times. Shall I activate safety measures, Sir?

"No, don’t. Does he have to access code? I believe he doesn't."

"No, Sir. Captain Rogers is not on the permitted list."

"Then leave him. He'd be gone by the time I'm finished with the suit."

"As you wish, Sir."

.

Tony Stark is rarely wrong when he predicts about people leaving him. Not that he cares, anyway; once he's tuned into his work it would normally take an alien invasion to get him out, knee-deep in machinery and codes and program, he doesn't have the luxury of chasing after relationships he knows he can't have. So there's Tony Stark, either people learn how to cope with him or he'll send them on their way, most chose the latter, he's not surprised. What surprises him, though, was when he’s promptly satisfied with the suit’s status later that evening and decided to crawl up to the kitchen since Jarvis’ warned him that he hasn’t digested anything in thirty-six hours and Dummy was making a special nutrition smoothie for him and that, of course, sent Tony flying to the stairs only to find a post-it note stuck on the glass door scribbled with Steve’s neat handwriting, _I’ll wait for you in the kitchen. Clint made cheeseburgers._

“Now that’s just evil.” He threw the yellow note a look as if the owner of it was there to see and for a brief second considered backing into the workshop pretending nothing had happened, but he caught a glimpse Dummy disastrous attempt at making smoothies in the corner of his eyes and Tony let out a sign of defeat. It’s just talking, he can totally do that without being a dick.

.

“You’re a lot sneakier than I gave you credit for, Rogers.” Tony said, startling Steve.

Surprisingly enough, Steve turned and smiled at him, and there was no sarcasm whatsoever, he gave a genuine smile, as if he’s truly glad that Tony was finally out in the open and suddenly Tony had squirmy feelings in his stomach. Maybe he should stop taking that much coffee from Dummy.

Steve let out a chuckle. “Well, you’re the one who locked me out after offering a conversation.”

“Uh, please, no offense but no one has the access to my workshop. Except Pepper and Rhoney for safety measures and I didn’t actually… er, notice you.” Tony let his eyes dart around the kitchen and basically everywhere not in the proximity of Steve Rogers, “And you know, I was promised cheeseburgers. With an s, that means plural.”

“It’s on the kitchen counter.” Steve leaned back in his seat, laughing fondly. “I managed to save some fries for you, too.”

Tony grabbed the stool by the kitchen door and made a dash for the counter before perching on said stool and practically inhaled the food in front of him. Halfway through the burgers and he came to realize how he must have looked right then; ripped jeans and a black tank top with burnt holes all over, there must be grease on his face, too, because clean rags on Dummy’s standard is still shit and his hair is probably defying gravity at this point. Hell, billionaire playboy reputation be damned.

“So, are we gonna talk about it?” Steve asked tentatively, Tony can tell he’s looking.

“Nah-ah, food first. Is it too late for coffee?” He said in a mouthful of potato, eyes shooting for the coffee pot.

“Caffeine overdose is a thing, you know? There’s hot cocoa in the microwave, though.”

Tony’s seemed to be running for food too frequently for his liking lately. “I think I’m in love with Clint. Don’t tell him that.” He said, cradling the cup in his hand while savoring the rich liquid. This is nice.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, he was full and content and maybe in need of a shower, but who cares. “Okay I’m ready now, spill it.”

Tony can sense the shift in Steve’s mood from a casual talk to a serious conversation, needless to say he hated it.

“I want to know the reason behind your actions lately.” And before Tony can butt in and stall himself some time, Steve added. “Said actions being you taking the hit for me on the field, every time, Tony. I know you can handle it unharmed, but I can’t stand the thought of someone else risking their lives for me.” Steve breathed out, strained. “What if one day a bullet pierced through your armor and… I can’t do it Tony.” He shook his head, avoiding eye-contact.

“I don't understand, why are you making such a big deal about it?” Tony raised his voiced, frustrated. “Clint’s got Natasha’s back all the time, and I don’t see they fighting each other about it? You said I’m not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over me. I’m doing it now, Rogers, why is it so hard for you to accept?”

Steve stared at him in frustration and for a while, Tony thought they’re going to have a fight and he’s royally fucked up again but Steve only took a deep breath which Tony _knew_ was to calm himself because people tend to have short temper when it comes to interacting with Tony. Steve looked at him with something similar to hopelessness in his eyes and before Tony can snap, Steve finally said something.

“I know what I said Tony, and I regretted it. I just don’t want to see another…” Steve let out a shaky breath, “Look, I know I can’t stop you from doing it, knowing you, you’re just too stubborn to listen to anyone." He laughed, but it was weak. "I’ve come here to compromise.”

“Oh? How so?” That was new.

Steve straighten his back, “You can have my back on the field if I can have yours. And I will have your back off the field also because I have no idea how you survived to this day with those terrible habits of yours.”

“What habit? I don’t h-”

“How long has it been since you had a proper meal at a proper hour?” Steve folded his arms across his chest and had that _try me_ look upon his face. Whoever implanted the idea of Captain America being an honorable righteous guy needs to go sit in a corner. Tony bet it was Phil Coulson.

“Er… Those burgers earlier don’t count?” They seemed pretty proper to him.

“No one eats dinner at two in the morning, Tony.”

Oh, so it was 2AM, he didn’t know that. What he did know, though, is that Captain America is a sneaky guy that would use your weakness against you to mercilessly given the chance. Hah, take that Coulson.

“I don’t… Jarvis?” He croaked.

“Two weeks ago, Sir, when Col. Rhodes took you out for lunch.” The AI answer with what Tony swore was disapproval in his voice and Steve just tilted his head judgingly, his body language was somewhere between _I knew it_ and _I told you so_. Great, they’re ganging up on him.

“Okay, fine, my biological clock is fucked up, I admit.” Tony mimicked the way Steve crossed his arms, “That doesn’t mean I need a nanny. I’m a grown man.”

“You have the sense of responsibility of a six-year-old, Tony.” Steve deadpanned. Okay, _touché._

“Look, Cap-”

“It’s Steve, Tony. We’ve known each other for a year now and you still refuse to call me by my name.” He cut in, voice wavering, “And I’m not offering to be your nanny, Tony. I just want to take care of you, like you did to me, to all of us.” Steve just looked at him, looked at Tony with his bright blue eyes and for the first time in a while Tony didn’t feel like he’s everything wrong with the world, like he was fucked up, like people come into his life just to leave him behind, and suddenly the churning feeling in his stomach returned and Tony promptly wondered if he ate too much fries at the same time.

He reconsidered the situation for a bit but realized that looking at Steve while doing so only backfires. “Yeah, fine, whatever Captain Compromise.” Tony slumped, “I’ll have Jarvis set a security code for you, it’s five-digit long, you can tell him anytime and it’d be your entry code.” He slipped off the stool, ignoring the flash of lights in Steve’s blue orbs. As he stretched his back, Tony felt the effect of burgers and cocoa kicked in and all at once his eyelids weighed a thousand times heavier.

“If that would be all, I'll get to bed now.” Tony yawned, "Good night, Steve." He added, the name tasted odd on his tongue but Tony decided that he was too exhausted to care. Making way for the door, all of a sudden he was met with broad shoulders and firm chest.

“Er, what are you doing?” He glanced up he quickly got how wrong of a decision it was; Steve was so close he can felt the warmth radiating from his body and the sweet scent of fabric softener with a hint of cinnamon. Steve grinned, fondly, and Tony found himself trapped in strong arms as he fought the urge to lean in the source of heat.

“I’m giving you a hug,” Steve murmured and Tony can feel the vibration in his chest. “Thor started it and now everyone’s been doing it once in a while.”

Tony went a bit stiff, “I smell like motor oil and apocalypse, you know.”

Steve huffed out a laugh and let him go after seven seconds because that must be the appropriate time frame to hug one of your colleagues good night and Tony can’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

“Okay, goodnight Tony.” Steve patted his shoulders and disappeared behind the kitchen door, smiling.

Tony took a few seconds to let everything sink in, “Er, J, what just happened?”

“I believe what you has just experienced was a team-bonding activity, Sir.”

“Hah, okay, I can work with that.” Tony said mostly to himself, his feet finding its way to the bed room. “I can work with that.”

"Good night, Sir." He heard Jarvis said but Tony's already lost in his thoughts.

That night, just before he drifted off to sleep, he felt himself recalling the warmth earlier but decided that he didn’t mind. Maybe he hasn’t had human interactions for a while.

 


End file.
